Kolkata: Struggling for goals, Arsenal found seven on Tuesday to register a Champions League record. Sterner tests await but if Arsenal had gone to PSV Eindhoven looking beleaguered, they left radiating brilliance.
Never before have Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal scored so many on his watch. Never before have any team done that in a Champions League away knockout tie. Eindhoven was hosting a carnival and Arsenal lived it up at the rectangular Philips Stadion with a 7-1 win in the first leg of this round of 16 tie.
Three goals came in 13 first-half minutes from Jurrien Timber, Ethan Nwaneri and Mikel Merino. Arsenal began the second with two within 99 seconds of each other through Martin Odegaard and Leandro Trossard. Odegaard scored again before providing the assist for Riccardo Calafiori. This was up there with the best of Champions League goalfests. And, mind you, this was with a makeshift attacking line.
So, get well soon, Kai Havertz, Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Martinelli and Gabriel Jesus but till you do, the Gunners have finally shown they can cope. With Trossard and Nwaneri on either side of Merino. Shoe-horned into the centre-forward’s position away to Leicester City last month, Merino has proved he can fit in and, when Ryan Flamingo slipped, be a fox in the box. Nwaneri, who got Arsenal’s second goal with a super left footer, has already showed that he belongs among football’s elite even if he is just 17. He became the third youngest scorer in a Champions League knockout tie, after Bojan Krkic and Jude Bellingham.
There have been 15 Champions League matches where the margin of victory has been more with Real Madrid and Liverpool topping the list with 8-0 wins. Knockout rounds are a different beast so what Arsenal did is on a par or close to Manchester United’s 7-1 win against Roma in 2007 and Bayern Munich’s 8-2 demolition of Barcelona in 2020. Both were in the quarter-final.
Like in those matches, one team was more accommodating than expected. The ease with which Odegaard and Nwaneri drove through the middle and the number of times PSV goalkeeper Walter Benitez was marooned was proof of how the night unravelled for the hosts.
PSV’s implosion this season almost mirrors Manchester City. Leading the Eredivisie standings by seven points in December, they are eight points behind Ajax and have been eliminated from the domestic cup competition. Arsenal too had a season to revive. They had not scored in three of their last four matches. Their campaigns in the FA Cup and Carabao Cup are over and the bid for a Premier League title is looking as laboured as a climber who has run out of oxygen high in the Himalayas. Visiting Eindhoven meant a chance to change the narrative, Timber had said before the match.
With six goals from inside the box, Arsenal did that – change the narrative and all but ensure they will meet a team from Madrid in the quarter-final. So good at converting corner-kicks, Arsenal were 5-1 ahead when they got their first. PSV had scored three in each of their last three Champions League home games, victories against Liverpool and Juventus being among them, but Noa Lang’s penalty was one of their two shots on target. Missing from the home team was the hunger shown by Declan Rice running the length of the pitch to win a corner-kick in the 82nd minute, Odegaard sliding to try and keep the ball in play midway through the first half and Gabriel celebrating a block when Arsenal were 7-1 ahead.
“Thank you to the players for the performance that they put in… The manner that we’ve done it, the way we played, the goals that we scored. Thank you because it was a special night,” said Arteta.
Asked what improvements the manager wanted, Arteta had spoken of wanting to suffocate opponents and play further from his goal. Arsenal do that but it inevitably leads to opponents adopting a low block which is difficult to break. Not on Tuesday though. Arsenal swarmed PSV’s penalty area; their passes slick and finishing clinical. After 36 minutes, PSV had four attempts but none on target, Arsenal had three attempts and three goals.
The match was not without its what-if moments. Had Myles Lewis-Skelly got a second booking and Arsenal would have been a player light in the 25th. De Jong not being able to keep a free header on target and Ismail Saibari rocking the horizontal in the 16th minute before Arsenal had opened their account too could have been crucial. Or, maybe not given the gulf between the teams.
“The standard was way too high for us tonight,” said PSV’s French defender Olivier Boscagli. “They were way better in every situation… every time they got into our box, they scored.”
